Christopher Wagstaff

A Sacred Quest: the Life and Writings of Mary Butts Christopher Wagstaff First edition

Mary Butts's writings are now back in print amidst astonishment at the long neglect of a central figure of the modernist era. Who was this writer of such penetrating intelligence and gifted style, who pioneered ecological and spiritual consciousness? In A Sacred Quest Christopher Wagstaff has gathered essays from writers who knew Mary Butts or her work contemporaneously, together with current appraisals by celebrated writers. He has included a representative selection of Mary Butts's own poetry, fiction, journal entries, letters and literary criticism, as well as new interviews with Quentin Bell, Virgil Thomson, Hugh Ross Williamson and Eugene MacCown, and up-to-date biographical information. Combining the personal dimensions of literary biography with original source materials and first-rate criticism, A Sacred Quest provides a valuable key to a major modern author whose importance is only now being understood in the history of Modernism, feminism and the avant-garde.